Sermon for: Nov 23, 2008 (St. Peter’s, Santa Maria CA) Brian H.O.A. McHugh, priest
Season: Proper 29A_RCL_Last Pentecost_Reign of Christ


Are we fools, we Christians, or what?? Here we stand, poised in hope, at the end of our liturgical year, on the last Sunday of the long season of Pentecost, claiming God is in charge of everything. In the blinding light of the Mystery of the Resurrection, for 28 weeks, we have pondered what the Spirit of God has attempted to show us, in the Eternal Present in which we live, about Life, about the Creation, about humanity, about the core Reality of Love. The question is always the same: How can, may, shall we be faithful manifestations of the Shepherd God in the World?

Today is sometimes called The Feast of Christ the King, or Of the Reign of Christ. Many of us keep it in the Episcopal Church, though it is not “official” in the Calendar. Our Collect, referring to the Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords is a “somewhat free”[1] translation of the Latin collect from the Roman Missal. The Roman Church has kept the feast since 1925, and it is included in the Lutheran Calendar.

Let’s look at the Collect for a minute. It speaks of God’s will to “restore all things” in God’s” well-beloved Son”, especially “the peoples of the Earth, divided and enslaved by sin”. I buy that. I believe the Gospel and the Hebrew Scriptures indeed speak to a deep desire for all of humanity to be one in God’s unconditional and abiding Love. The real question for me, after 40 years pondering and preaching about the Gospel, is, How? And, What does “brought together under His most gracious rule” mean?? Many Christians over the last 2000 years have interpreted it as meaning that God wants everyone to be a Christian, to be part of the Christian Church, broadly defined. With respect, I disagree.

Now, it may be that my concept of God’s Time is impoverished. But, looking back over 2000 years, I think I have adequate basis for thinking metaphorically rather than literally. Jesus is, to my mind, essentially, in the lovely phrase from the hymn, the King of Love, and our Shepherd. The human community does not show, in all recorded history, a tendency towards unity under one temporal, religious, or spiritual “ruler”. We human beings have free will, will not be coerced or subjugated (as history surely shows), and unity only comes through Choice. Unity cannot be imposed for long. It is like Love. Love can only be given or received freely, and is the only way that true Unity can be achieved. As that other lovely hymn says, Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est - Where is found compassion and love, there is God. In other words, God’s purpose can only be achieved when Love reigns as “King” ….. or “Queen”.

In preaching two Sundays ago about the nature of “The Kingdom of God” I said I based my core understanding on three sayings of Jesus: First, Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand; Second, My Kingdom is not of this world; and, Third, The Kingdom of God is within you.
At hand means that that the Kingdom is a kind of parallel universe – and it can break through in what are called these days “thin” spots - holy places, or people, or events. The Church is meant to be such a “thin” place. By my observation, we are failing widely. We have made the institutional church and the Bible “golden calves”, often worshipping them than the Living God.
Not of this World means that the Church can’t be a kind of spiritualized replacement of the United Nations with some religious leader at the top, Pope, Imam, llama, avatar, or whomever. The Kingdom is not of bricks and mortar, and in Gethsemane Jesus would not allow Peter to act as if it were. The Kingdom of God is a vision of the heart, mind, and spirit. It transcends all boundaries of power, control, and inequality. Love is the only “sword” that can be wielded in it’s construction or defense.
Within you means that the seeds of Kingdom-building rest within each human being. The seed is divine Love, the presence of the Holy One. There is only one way in which that seed can grow, as Jesus taught in a parable. The seed must be buried and die in order to produce abundant fruit. We must rise to the consciousness that we are matter infused by spirit. We are a manifestation of God – and are called to live accordingly.

“Becoming Christ” is fundamentally what our religious practice is all about. Baptism unites our material nature, signified by the water, with the life-giving Spirit, signified by the Dove, and sets us on the path to full humanity. The Body and Blood of the Christ – our spiritual food and drink - nourishes the Christ Within. All our personal and communal piety – and, critically, the physical structures and organization of the church in the World – have only one central aim: to awaken us to the presence of God incarnate within us. When the Christ is alive within us, the Kingdom manifests itself in the Earth.

The writer to the church in Ephesus understood this. He says of the Church, The church is Christ's body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence. But, he warns, the Church is dead unless the Church’s members be “intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for Christians, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength!”.

The Reign of Christ is not established by Worldly might. Nor, I have come to realize, by some final allegiance by all to some one or another institutional Church or Faith, especially those which resort to coercion or fear. Nor by the fundamentalist’s vain delusion that God will override our free will to choose, and intervene to impose Her will. The Reign of Christ only becomes a reality in the World when Divine Love pours out of us. This is God’s message to all human beings, and certainly to those of us called to witness to this truth by “taking up the Cross”. Here is the meaning of the parable of the separation of the Sheep and the Goats: Either you see God in human beings or you don’t. God reigns only as human beings love God and each other and the whole Creation as God loves us. If we remember nothing else from the Gospel, Jesus drove the message home in His Great Commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. As 1 John reminds us, Anyone who says he love God but hates his “neighbour” is a lair.

Are we Christians fools? Today, we end our liturgical year expressing our hope that the Kingdom of Divine Love, headed by a Shepherd King, is possible. Next Sunday, we will begin our new liturgical year in the same way. We will immerse ourselves in the truth and hope that the Kingdom is at hand, that it transcends this physical World, that it is within us and every human being. At the Christ-mass, we will rejoice that the Christ is born in us and every person. Then we will set out once again to give Life to the hope of the unity and freedom of all the peoples of the Earth, “divided and enslaved by sin”. Each will do what we can, in Love.

Fools? Yes we are. Can we know and liberate the God-in-Us; give ourselves to Love; care for Mother Earth; see every human being as our sister, our brother; have compassion for the poor; defend the oppressed and the victims of false witness, including our Gay and Lesbian brothers and sisters; choose Love over defending institutions of power, both secular and religious?

As a man just elected to be President of the United States calmly says: Yes we can.

[1] Marion Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer Book